August 15, 2013
09:00 AM (EDT)

News Release Number: STScI-2013-33

Hubble Sees True Shapes of Galaxies 11 Billion Years Back in Time

August 15, 2013: Looking 11 billion years back in time to when the universe was very young,
astronomers have found that the anatomy of distant galaxies is not that different
from galaxies seen in the nearby universe today. The results come from the
Hubble Space Telescope Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic
Legacy Survey (CANDELS). The largest project in the history of Hubble, it aims
to explore galactic evolution in the early universe, and the very first seeds of
cosmic structure at less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

Previous studies of this early epoch were inconclusive because they were limited
to visible light. Because of the stretching of light by the expansion of the universe the
visible light detected in distant galaxies actually maps only the ultraviolet
emissions of the galaxies. Because this radiation only comes from regions of
active star formation the galaxies appeared to be clumpy and messy, with no
resemblance to the galaxy shapes we see around us today. By observing the
galaxies in infrared light with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, astronomers could
observe how these distant galaxies would appear normally in visible light if their
radiation were not stretched to infrared wavelengths by the expanding universe. For more information about this study, visit: http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1315 .